Obsolete

Last weekend, our tablet crashed. I was in the middle of browsing a webpage of little importance, when the screen froze and the tablet refused to comply with any further swiping-based instructions.

It's scarcely more than a year old, so I figured I should get it fixed rather than sling it out. That meant I lost a couple of hours of my life trying to reinstall the operating system, the object either showing a picture of a cheery green android to taunt me, or else remaining resolutely black.

Clearly I wasn't going to make progress on my own, or with the handy (but unhelpful) suggestions on the internet. I took it to the Samsung shop on the way home, and they told me to take it to the basement of Dhoby Ghaut, where the repair centre lives.

The Samsung repair facility in the bowels of Dhoby Ghaut is a horrible place to be. It has been lit with those ultra-white light bulbs, the kind that save energy while giving your skin a blueish tinge, until your veins practically glow and you think you might be dead. Somebody gives you a ticket and you wait until it's your time.

It was soon my time. My skin was still turning blue.

I explained my predicament. The customer service representative listened, then walked away, then came back, then walked away again, then came back again to tell me we'd need to replace the motherboard, for $300.

I blanched. The CSR couldn't tell, because of Samsung's lightbulb decisions. I walked out, put out that the cost of repairing a year-old tablet was 50% of its purchase price. As I left, I asked a feckless young shop assistant how much a new Samsung 7.7 would cost, rather than this exorbitant repair.

"You can't buy one" he said. "Obsolete."

I fled, uncertain if he was describing the tablet or me. Damn you, Samsung.